Southend bus boss confirms the true location of Sorry Not In Service.

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After many years of speculation, the real location of Sorry Not In Service has been confirmed by the head of local bus services in Southend.

Charles Ringbell, CEO of Southend Buses, was secretly recorded by a Southend News Network undercover reporter during a chance meeting in The Blue Boar pub in Victoria Avenue. During this conversation, he let slip that Sorry Not In Service is a small village that lies around five miles due east of Shoebury East Beach.

This shock development comes as no surprise to Thorpe Bay resident Eileen Over, 68. ‘I have sometimes spent three days waiting for a bus to Shoeburyness, only for multiple buses to come speeding past that are heading for Sorry Not In Service. There can’t be too many people living there, as every service always seems to be empty.’

Local bus users can be reassured by this news. It has previously been thought previously in the past that buses displayed Sorry Not In Service in order to avoid carrying rain-soaked passengers who had spent a significant chunk of their lifetime waiting for a bus.

In a separate development, Southend News Network can also EXCLUSIVELY reveal that putting a hand out clearly to make a bus stop hasn’t been a recognised signal for waiting passengers since 1984. During our secret conversation with Mr Ringbell, he confirmed that drivers will now only stop for those who are dressed entirely in fluorescent pink, and also that drivers reserve the right to drive straight past if they can see schoolchildren who look ‘a bit rowdy.’

Comments

That last paragraph seems surprisingly close to the truth. I was a bus conductor for Southend Transport in 1981 and we used to have a competition to see how many “runners” we could get each day. A “runner” was someone running for the bus and just before they could jump on the back we would ring the bell, leaving them at the stop. I believe the record was 64 in one shift.